Calendar
Last year Burger King made $117,000,000 in profits. Walgreens made $253,000,000.
Downtown Oakland workers deserve a raise!
Hundreds of fast food workers in NYC recently participated in a strike to demand $15/hr. It is time to bring the Fight for Fifteen campaign to Oakland.
With the cost of rent driven up by gentrification, plus childcare, healthcare and other bills, $8/hour is not enough to survive in Oakland. Mayor Jean Quan says Oakland is “rising” but the lowest paid workers, who are more likely to be people of color and women, are left behind.
$15/hr livable wage for all Oakland workers!
Rally, march and noise demo throughout downtown Oakland, exposing the practices of corporations who thrive off of low wage labor.
Town Hall on Drones: Informing Policy in Berkeley.
Racism and oppression are alive and well in the US. From the attempts of politicians to rob African-Americans of the right to vote in the latest elections, the millions trapped in the prison system, to the epidemic of police murders that have claimed the lives of Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, and Alan Blueford, the New Jim Crow is out of control.
In celebration of what would have been his 88th birthday, the International Socialist Organization will hold a discussion about the revolutionary ideas of Malcolm X. As revolt and struggles of the oppressed grow all around the globe, activists can learn many lessons from Malcolm X’s ideas and struggles. From his legacy of struggle against racism, firm belief in the right of the oppressed to defend themselves, to his internationalism, Malcolm X still has much to offer a new generation of activists.
TELL JEAN QUAN:
OAKLAND IS NOT ARIZONA!
OUR DEMANDS:
Full citizenship rights for all people who live here, go to school here, work here, and otherwise contribute to this society. Latina/o, black, Asian, Arab, Native American, white, immigrants with and without papers—we are ALL Americans.
Open the borders—give people the same rights that NAFTA provides to the corporations for unrestricted passage across borders.
No more deportations.
Make all young people brought by their parents full citizens now.
No fines for the millions of people without papers who are here now.
Stop long probationary periods for people to gain citizenship. Create a quick and cheap pathway to citizenship for all undocumented people.
Pass the Federal DREAM Act Now!
12PM: March from 98th Ave. + International (Oakland)
2PM: Rally & Celebration at 34th Ave. + International (near Fruitvale BART)
Photos and Art by TRISTAN ANDERSON. Free Event! Free Food! 40 THIEVES Revolutionary Hip Hop, NEPANTLER@S Queer Chicano Punk, Slideshow on the OAXACA COMMUNE…. and more! Between LA PENA and The LONG HAUL on both sides of the street!
Meet at Sunnyside Park and walk to 9200 Birch St where Alan was killed. (Candles provided).
Rest in Power, Alan. 20 Dec 1993 – 6 May, 2012.
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Justice 4 Alan Blueford Website.
It’s not just the post office
that’s being privatized.
Our schools, our public spaces,
parks and services are all at risk.
Join Us!
Help save our public commons!
Come to the rally!
The USPS wants to sell Berkeley’s historic main post office. Citizens to Save the Berkeley Post Office is a grassroots group that has come together to block the sale of our heritage, stop service cut backs, and preserve living wage postal jobs.
Our fight is not unique. Thousands of post office closures across the country mean the largest private auction of public history our nation has ever seen.
Join the movement and spread the word. Our post office is not for sale.
You’re Invited To A Good Old LAND OCCUPATION With Your Friends At
Occupy The Farm
Liberate the Land!
Celebration! Skill Share! Work Party! Campout!
2:00 PM Refreshments with Swedish Nyckelharpa and Fiddle music by Toby Blome, Marilyn Jackson & friends
2:30 PM Presentation by Toby Blome
Last October, Toby Blome joined 33 other Americans on the CodePink Peace Delegation to Pakistan, to learn firsthand about the consequences of drone warfare in Pakistan and to
support the growing resistance to U.S. drone strikes. She will report on
first hand accounts about life under daily drone surveillance in Waziristan,
Pakistan, the civilians lost to hellfire missiles, the survivors’ stories, and
the many ways everyday life throughout Pakistan has been seriously altered by
the U.S. War on Terror.
Learn the full story of how Obama’s secret wars, using remotely controlled unmanned
planes to carry out illegal targeted killing, have caused significant
collateral damage and are ultimately counterproductive by inciting anti-American
rage and animosity.
Toby Blome, a physical therapist and former educator, is an organizer with the San Francisco chapter of CODEPINK, a women-led peace & social justice organization. She has been very involved in the drone warfare resistance movement in the U.S. since 2009.
RSVP as seating is limited!
The placing of Mama Assata Shakur on a terrorist list is the United States latest and most egregious attack on the freedom fighter who has inspired so many of us to do the work we do.
These new and dangerous attacks require an unprecedented demonstration of unity among all of the different groups working for justice in the Bay Area. The ONYX Organizing Committee & Anarchists of Color invite you to join us for a “Hands Off Assata” Speak Out and “Welcome Home GP” BBQ.
This POTLUCK BBQ will offer us a chance to speak out against State Terrorism, network with other like-minded people doing the work and bring attention to the need for unity in our struggles.
More info and RSVP at Facebook Page
Come stand (well sit) in solidarity with the four arrested at Occupy The Farm on Monday.
Civil trial hearings for the murder of Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. will begin May 16th @ 9:00am @ the US Federal Building in SF 450 Golden Gate – court room #5 on the 17th floor – Judge Edward Chen.
Facebook page of Justice 4 Kenneth Harding
Adam and Jeralynn Blueford, the parents of 18 year old Alan Blueford killed at the hands of Oakland Police Officer Miguel Masso on 5/6/12, standing with the Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition, will hold a press conference to once again demand justice for their son, present over 1800 petition signatures for the firing of Miguel Masso, and call for accountability from OPD.
Please join us.
Hey it’s warm out and it’s been a while, so the Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group is pulling together another one of our fabulous DIY Drive-In movie nights for this week.
DIY Drive-In Returns to Jodie’s! This week: “Network”
Join us this Thursday as we screen “Network” – you remember, the famous source of the mantra “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Well, this Oscar-winning film has a lot more in store than just that one line, and remains fresh for today with its stark truth-telling about the profit motives of the corporate media, and the pacification of the public with mindless infotainment.
Written by Paddy Chayevsky, directed by Sydney Lumet, and featuring a power-packed cast including Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter FInch, Robert Duvall, and Ned Beatty.
Come check it out! Treats will be provided.
This film is rated R for strong language, some sexual content, and a scene of violence (source IMDb.com)
Members of Gays Without Borders and the Bradley Manning Support Network are organizing a rally and speak out for this year’s edition of International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia on Friday, May 17th in San Francisco, CA. IDAHO is an annual event marking the day the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its classification of diseases in 1990.
What: IDAHO Rally
Why: Declare Bradley Manning the People’s Grand Marshal of SF Pride
The reason why Gays Without Borders is proudly partnering with the Bradley Manning Support Network for the rally is to continue building on community support declaring him Grand Marshal of the SF Pride parade. Manning is the accused gay U.S. Army Private accused of divulging a massive amount of government documents to WikiLeaks.
He was originally chosen to be a Grand Marshal at Pride, but that honor was rescinded in secrecy by the board of directors of Pride, touching off a global outcry condemning the rescission and unleashing a flood of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender solidarity for Manning.
LGBT activists and straight allies will gather at Harvey Milk Plaza on Friday with enormous colorful banners demanding freedom for Manning and global gay solidarity. There will be an open mike session for people to comment about the importance of IDAHO, the Pride board’s rescission and express concerns for Manning as he prepares for trial.
The UC raided and bulldozed the farm we worked so hard to till and plant last weekend, plowing all of our starts under. So we’re going to replant it. Meet at 11 AM on Saturday, and bring gardening tools, gloves, sunscreen, water bottles, sleeping bag and tent. If you can’t come on Saturday, please come Sunday at 11 am.
Folks are gathering at San Pablo & Monroe in Albany, CA at 11 AM on Saturday, May 18th to replant. Bring tools & food to share.
There may be more information on Faceplant, but your humble submitter don’t play that.
On Saturday, May 18th, Strike Debt Bay Area will host the Bay Area’s Second Debtors’ Assembly. (The first one was held in February. The beautiful posters for both created by SDBA organizer Sandy Sanders are shown below.)
As individuals, families, and communities, most of us are drowning in debt for the basic things we need to live, including housing, education, and health care. Even those of us who do not have personal debt are affected by predatory lending. Our essential public services are cut because our cities and towns are held hostage by the same big banks that have been bailed out by our government. All of us are outraged that big banks don’t have to pay their debts, but we do.
Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid—of becoming homeless, of going hungry, of being crippled or killed by treatable illness, or of being trapped in poverty-level jobs. Those facing foreclosure, medical debt, student debt, or credit card debt feel alone, hounded by debt collectors, and forced into unrewarding work to keep up with payments.
Strike Debt is building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. At the Debtors’ Assembly we will come together as a community and begin to rethink debt, not as an issue of individual shame, but as a political platform for collective resistance and action. Come to the Assembly to learn about tools for escaping the closing walls of debt, to share resources and skills, and to magnify our assembled energy. As we share our experiences we can begin to take back from the financiers what they have taken from us: our freedom and our future.
Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.
ORGANIZATION INFO: Strike Debt Bay Area is the local chapter of Strike Debt, an international movement of groups working to build popular resistance to all forms of unjust debt. Strike Debt has organized the Rolling Jubilee, the Debt Resistors Operations Manual, and local debtors’ assemblies. Strike Debt supports the creation of just and sustainable economies, based on mutual aid, common goods, and public affluence. We owe the financial institutions nothing. It is to our friends, families and community that we owe everything.
Poster from First Debtors’ Assembly:
Protest at the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Conference
Sunday, May 19, 2013
11:30am-5:30pm
Moscone Center, 747 Howard Street, San Francisco
http://occupypsychiatry.net/occupyapa2013/130513OccupyAPANewsRelease.pdf
CONTACTS:
Matthew Morrissey (415) 722-6317 mattmorr21@yahoo.com
Jim Gottstein (907) 274-7686 jim.gottstein@psychrights.org
American Psychiatric Association Protest
May 19, 2013 — San Francisco
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 2013
On May 19th, MindFreedom International, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®), and the California Client Action Workgroup, organized under the Occupy Psychiatry banner, will protest of the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 Annual Conference at the Moscone Center, 747 Howard St, San Francisco, California from 11:30 am until 5:30 pm.
The American Psychiatric Association is being charged with serious human rights abuses, coercing people to undergo brain-damaging psychiatric drugs and electroshock, psychiatric profiling, scientific fraud, and psychiatric labeling, including the already discredited Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to be released at the conference.
Psychiatric survivor, psychotherapist and MindFreedom Board Member Matthew Morrissey will speak and MC the protest rally and demonstration which will feature the following speakers:
§ Leonard Roy Frank, psychiatric survivor and editor.” As psychiatrist Thomas Szasz wrote in 2008, ‘Modern psychiatry — with its Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of nonexisting diseases and their coercive cures — is a monument to quackery on a scale undreamed of in the annals of medicine.’ Now is the time for the people to hold the American Psychiatric Association and its members accountable for their crimes against humanity.”
§ Ted Chabasinski, psychiatric survivor and lawyer, who was electroshocked for experimental purposes when he was six years old. “The increased labeling and drugging of children, and the way the new DSM puts everyone at risk for being called ‘mentally ill’ must be stopped. Everyone must realize that they too can be called crazy, not just those who have already been dragged into and trapped by the system.”
§ Chaya Grossberg, psychiatric survivor and healer. “Rather than being a source for healing, the American Psychiatric Association has damaged the souls and bodies of millions of Americans.”
§ Michael Cornwall, PhD, licensed therapist and human rights activist. “The profession of psychiatry lives in a collective state of denial. Psychiatrists are true believers with a religious fundamentalist type of fervor that allows them to routinely injure, and frequently hasten the death of those they are sworn to heal. But the reckoning is upon them. Their blatant human rights violations will not stand the light of day.”
§ James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq., psychiatric survivor and lawyer. “Hundreds of thousands of people are locked up and drugged or electroshocked against their will every day under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Association. These are human rights abuses on a massive scale in violation of United States and International Law. The American Psychiatric Association must be held accountable for its role in these horrors.”
There will also be an open microphone for protestors who want to speak. At least portions of the protest will be live-streamed at ustream.tv on the Occupy Psychiatry Channel, http://bit.ly/10kf0cS.
On Friday, May 17th, from 7 to 10 pm, along with protest preparations, there will be a free/donation based screening of Daniel Mackler’s new film, Coming off Psych Drugs: A Meeting of the Minds, at the beautiful Goforaloop Gallery, 1458 San Bruno Ave., San Francisco.
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Come to the very first session of The Politics of Debt reading group on Monday, May 20th at 6:30!
Darwin Bond-Graham will help kick off the discussion and present on public debt as it relates to our personal lives and public institutions. Together we will help shed light on the variety of ways that the debt economy subjects individuals and communities to moral and financial burden. After the initial talk we will break into a general group discussion and lay out the vision for the class.